Google Inc.’s Android operating system now accounts for more than four out of every five smartphones sold in the world, according to industry research firm Gartner Inc.’s quarterly report.

At the end of the second quarter, Android accounted for 79% of all phones. The latest figures push it over the line at 81.9%. Android’s continuing growth comes as the overall smartphone market grew 45.8% compared with the third quarter last year, driven by the Asia/Pacific region, where smartphones sales increased by 77.3% compared with the year-earlier quarter.

More smartphones were sold in the second quarter of 2013 than feature phones, the first time that has happened, according to a report published Wednesday.

Gartner said smartphones accounted for 51.8% of mobile phone sales globally. The huge growth in smartphones, up 46.5% compared to the same quarter last year, is driven by the growth in the sub-$100 Android market, said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. Basic phones which don’t carry the same level as technology as a smartphone are characterized as feature phones.

“We have seen that smartphones are starting from around $60 in 2013,” he said. “That was not the case in the same quarter in 2012. Then it was $120 or maybe even higher. The gap between average feature phone price and low cost smartphone price has really closed in the last couple of quarters.”

The headline-grabbing feature on Samsung’s latest Galaxy phone is eye-tracking. But what is the feature really good for?

The front-facing camera on the new Galaxy S4 launched last night uses eye tracking to allow for “smart pauses”. Users watching a video on their new phone will find the video automatically pauses if it detects that the user’s eyes have moved from the screen.

But it’s more head-tracking than true “gaze tracking” says Henrik Eskilsson CEO and Founder of Swedish startup Tobii that pioneers the use of eye-tracking software.

Samsung Electronics Co. is turning up the heat on Apple Inc. with two new offerings: the Galaxy Note 8.0 launched on the eve of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and the new Galaxy smartphone that will be introduced March 14 in New York.

Over the last few years, Samsung and Apple have gone head-to-head for dominance in the mobile-devices market. But the South Korean giant isn’t the only tablet and phone maker stepping up its game against Apple: Its smaller rivals are also looking to break into the big leagues.

The new HTC One, launched Tuesday simultaneously in both London and New York is arguably the most important phone that HTC CEO Peter Chou will launch.

The Taiwanese phone maker has struggled in the face of an onslaught from its Korean rival Samsung which dominates the Android phone sector. The new HTC One (which confusingly shares the same name as its predecessor) is Mr. Chou’s attempt to win back the ground he has ceded.

No one can say with this phone Mr. Chou and HTC’s VP of design Scott Croyle have not been bold. The sleek curved aluminium case, which looks like a piece of German precision engineering, stands out against the ubiquitous black rectangular devices on the market today.

The mesh of who is suing who over what in the mobile sector became slightly, but only very slightly, less of a mesh with the surprising news Tuesday that Samsung is unilaterally dropping its requests for sales injunctions against Apple in five EU countries.

“Samsung remains committed to licensing our technologies on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, and we strongly believe it is better when companies compete fairly in the marketplace, rather than in court,” the firm said in a statement. “In this spirit, Samsung has decided to withdraw our injunction requests against Apple on the basis of our standard essential patents pending in European courts, in the interest of protecting consumer choice.”

So why would Samsung make such an act of munificence? Well, according to some analysts Samsung is perhaps not quite as munificent as first seems. Firstly, this is not, as some early reports suggested, the dropping of all legal actions. It is simply the dropping of Samsung’s bid for a sales injunction in five EU states (Germany, France, the U.K., Italy and the Netherlands).

Secondly, there is some doubt over how successful its bid would have been anyway. Samnsung’s move comes a day after a U.S. judge denied Apple’s request for a ban on the sale of some Samsung products in the U.S. market, tempering Apple’s sweeping win in a California court case this summer.

Queen Elizabeth II is presented with the Galaxy by John Samson, 12, during a visit

Queen Elizabeth of the U.K. is to be presented with her first tablet computer for the Royal Collection. It will form a “digital time-capsule” of memories of the first 60 years of her reign. More than 37,000 people have taken part contributing 80,000 entries to the “Diamond (re)Collection.

What has surprised some commentators is the choice of hardware, a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 rather than an Apple iPad. The BBC reports:

Apple executives usually have plenty to smile about, but now their “smileys” are being challenged by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. in a German court.

Samsung alleges Apple is infringing a patent it filed in 2001, covering a quick and easy method for inserting smileys — the representations of a facial expressions using punctuation marks — when typing text messages on a mobile device. Rather than typing a string of special characters, the user chooses from a selection of picture smileys which the phone then converts to the corresponding characters.

Apple denies the charge. The judge set Dec. 7 as date for a decision on the matter.

The case is just one of many global battles over patents between Apple, Samsung and other tech companies in courts around the world.

So far though, most of the court rulings in Germany have brought only grimaces to faces on the Apple side. Last month, a court rejected Apple’s claim that Samsung and Google Inc’s hardware unit Motorola Mobility infringed on an Apple patent concerning touchscreens. In July, a court in Munich said Samsung didn’t infringe an Apple patent governing a list-scrolling feature and that same month a Duesseldorf court decided that Samsung’s 10.1 inch Galaxy Tab tablet no longer infringed Apple’s intellectual property after the South Korean company amended the design.

Other lawsuits between Apple and Samsung are still pending in several German courts.

Stockholm-based iZettle, which last month announced a $31.6 million expansion round, has started testing its payment technology on Android devices in Sweden. Until now it has only produced dongles to turn iOS devices into chip-and-pin card readers.

The company claims 50,000 merchants in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway are already using a dongle with an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Ingrid Lunden reports in TechCrunch that the new Android service is being tested initially on Samsung Galaxy S II, SIII and Galaxy Note devices.

A win is a win, but Samsung must be smarting from the putdown by an English judge who said Samsung’s Galaxy Tab didn’t infringe Apple’s intellectual property because it wasn’t as “cool” as it’s rival’s product.

The Galaxy tablets “do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design,” Judge Colin Birss said Monday in a ruling at the High Court in London. “They are not as cool.”

In an emailed statement, Samsung welcomed the ruling, saying it “affirms our position that our Galaxy Tab products do not infringe Apple’s registered design right. As the ruling proves, the origins of Apple’s registered design features can be found in numerous examples of prior art.

Should Apple continue to make excessive legal claims in other countries based on such generic designs, innovation in the industry could be harmed and consumer choice unduly limited.”

About Tech Europe

Tech Europe covers Europe’s technology leaders, their companies, and the people and industries that support them — and their ideas. The blog is edited by Ben Rooney, with contributions from The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires.